“Yes, sir,” cried all the little boys with great eagerness.
“That’s right,” said Squeers, calmly getting on with his breakfast; “keep ready till I tell you to begin. Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human natur. This is the way we inculcate strength of mind, Mr. Nickleby,” said the schoolmaster, turning to Nicholas, and speaking with his mouth very full of beef and toast.
Nicholas murmured something—he knew not what—in reply; and the little boys, dividing their gaze between the mug, the bread and butter (which had by this time arrived), and every morsel which Mr. Squeers took into his mouth, remained with strained eyes in torments of expectation.
“Thank God for a good breakfast,” said Squeers, when he had finished. “Number one may take a drink.”
Number one seized the mug ravenously, and had just drunk enough to make him wish for more, when Mr. Squeers gave the signal for number two, who gave up at the same interesting moment to number three; and the process was repeated until the milk and water terminated with number five.
“And now,” said the schoolmaster, dividing the bread and butter for three into as many portions as there were children, “you had better look sharp with your breakfast, for the horn will blow in a minute or two, and then every boy leaves off.”
Permission being thus given to fall to, the boys began to eat voraciously, and in desperate haste: while the schoolmaster (who was in high good humour after his meal) picked his teeth with a fork, and looked smilingly on. In a very short time, the horn was heard.
“I thought it wouldn’t be long,” said Squeers, jumping up and producing a little basket from under the seat; “put what you haven’t had time to eat, in here, boys! You’ll want it on the road!”
Nicholas was considerably startled by these very economical arrangements; but he had no time to reflect upon them, for the little boys had to be got up to the top of the coach, and their boxes had to be brought out and put in, and Mr. Squeers’s luggage was to be seen carefully deposited in the boot, and all these offices were in his department. He was in the full heat and bustle of concluding these operations, when his uncle, Mr. Ralph Nickleby, accosted him.
“Oh! here you are, sir!” said Ralph. “Here are your mother and sister, sir.”
“Where?” cried Nicholas, looking hastily round.
“Here!” replied his uncle. “Having too much money and nothing at all to do with it, they were paying a hackney coach as I came up, sir.”
“We were afraid of being too late to see him before he went away from us,” said Mrs. Nickleby, embracing her son, heedless of the unconcerned lookers-on in the coach-yard.
“Very good, ma’am,” returned Ralph, “you’re the best judge of course. I merely said that you were paying a hackney coach. I never pay a hackney coach, ma’am; I never hire one. I haven’t been in a hackney coach of my own hiring, for thirty years, and I hope I shan’t be for thirty more, if I live as long.”
“I should never have forgiven myself if I had not seen him,” said Mrs. Nickleby. “Poor dear boy—going away without his breakfast too, because he feared to distress us!”
“Mighty fine certainly,” said Ralph, with great testiness. “When I first went to business, ma’am, I took a penny loaf and a ha’porth of milk for my breakfast as I walked to the city every morning; what do you say to that, ma’am? Breakfast! Bah!”
“Now, Nickleby,” said Squeers, coming up at the moment buttoning his greatcoat; “I think you’d better get up behind. I’m afraid of one of them boys falling off and then there’s twenty pound a year gone.”
“Dear Nicholas,” whispered Kate, touching her brother’s arm, “who is that vulgar man?”
“Eh!” growled Ralph, whose quick ears had caught the inquiry. “Do you wish to be introduced to Mr. Squeers, my dear?”
“That the schoolmaster! No, uncle. Oh no!” replied Kate, shrinking back.
“I’m sure I heard you say as much, my dear,” retorted Ralph in his cold sarcastic manner. “Mr. Squeers, here’s my niece: Nicholas’s sister!”
“Very glad to make your acquaintance, miss,” said Squeers, raising his hat an inch or two. “I wish Mrs. Squeers took gals, and we had you for a teacher. I don’t know, though, whether she mightn’t grow jealous if we had. Ha! ha! ha!”
If the proprietor of Dotheboys Hall could have known what was passing in his assistant’s breast at that moment, he would have discovered, with some surprise, that he was as near being soundly pummelled as he had ever been in his life. Kate Nickleby, having a quicker perception of her brother’s emotions, led him gently aside, and thus prevented Mr. Squeers from being impressed with the fact in a peculiarly disagreeable manner.
“My dear Nicholas,” said the young lady, “who is this man? What kind of place can it be that you are going to?”
“I hardly know, Kate,” replied Nicholas, pressing his sister’s hand. “I suppose the Yorkshire folks are rather rough and uncultivated; that’s all.”
“But this person,” urged Kate.
“Is my employer, or master, or whatever the proper name may be,” replied Nicholas quickly; “and I was an ass to take his coarseness ill. They are looking this way, and it is time I was in my place. Bless you, love, and goodbye! Mother, look forward to our meeting again someday! Uncle, farewell! Thank you heartily for all you have done and all you mean to do. Quite ready, sir!”
With these hasty adieux, Nicholas mounted nimbly to his seat, and waved his hand as gallantly as if his heart went with it.
At this moment, when the coachman and guard were comparing notes for the last time before starting, on the subject of the waybill; when porters were screwing out the last reluctant sixpences, itinerant newsmen making the last offer of a morning paper, and
